Greece in the Roman era

The definitive Roman occupation of the Greek world was established after the Battle of Actium (31 BC), in which Augustus defeated Cleopatra VII, the Greek Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, and the Roman general Mark Antony, and afterwards conquered Alexandria (30 BC), the last great city of Hellenistic Egypt.

During the Roman civil wars, Greece was physically and economically devastated until Augustus organised the peninsula as the province of Achaea, in 27 BC.

Initially, Rome's conquest of Greece damaged the economy, but it readily recovered under Roman administration in the postwar period.

Roman culture was highly influenced by the Greeks; as Horace said, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Captive Greece captured her rude conqueror").

The Roman Emperor Nero visited Greece in 66 AD, and performed at the Ancient Olympic Games, despite the rules against non-Greek participation.

The apostle Paul of Tarsus preached in Philippi, Corinth and Athens, and Thessalonica soon became one of the most highly Christianized areas of the empire.

Eventually, Alaric and the Goths migrated to Italy, sacked Rome in 410, and built the Visigothic Kingdom in Iberia, which lasted until 711 with the advent of the Arabs.

[citation needed] Older scenarios of poverty, depopulation, barbarian destruction, and civil decay have been revised in light of recent archaeological discoveries.

Contemporary texts such as Hierocles' Syndekmos affirm that late antique Greece was highly urbanised and contained approximately eighty cities.

[7] This view of extreme prosperity is widely accepted today, and it is assumed between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, Greece may have been one of the most economically active regions in the eastern Mediterranean.

Over the course of the following centuries, mainland Greece was mainly contested between the Roman and Bulgarian Empires, and suffered from invasions by Slavic tribes and Normans.

Crete and Cyprus were contested between the Romans and Arabs and were later taken by the Crusaders who, following the Sack of Constantinople in 1204, established the Latin Empire in Thrace and Greece.